This application relates generally to network control. More specifically, the disclosure provided herein relates to controlling data access and rate in a network.
In some modern communication networks such as some cellular networks, data communications have become even more prevalent than voice communications. As such, some communication network operators have recently shifted network growth efforts from increasing capacity for voice communications to efforts for growing data communications portions of the communication networks in an effort to provide customers with quick and reliable data communications. Notwithstanding network operators' efforts to increase the capacity of data portions of these communications networks, congestion continues to be a problem for many network operators.
Some communications networks may process millions or even billions of requests for data communications per day. The requests for data communications can effectively ask the network to establish a data session between the requestor and some source of data such as a media server, an email server, or the like. The network may or may not inspect the requests to determine priority and/or importance of the requests. Rather, the network may simply establish the requested session on a first-come-first-served basis.
While network traffic is relatively predictable, current events or other trends may cause temporary or even prolonged spikes in data traffic. These spikes may be difficult to predict. Additionally, because data resources of the network typically are finite, there may be no way to quickly adjust network operations to accommodate such a spike in data traffic. Furthermore, users sometimes pay for and expect reliable and fast data communications. These users expect their data sessions to begin almost immediately. Because the users may not be aware of network congestion at any given time, these users expect data delivery to be consistent and any delay or performance degradation can affect a user's perception of the network provider. Thus, network congestion can not only affect performance of the network, but also can affect user satisfaction with the network in general.